Green Vespa, Green fava

This post is a response to my friend Andrew's blog post on the same Vespa. As I wrote in my last post, we're conducting a little experiment. He's an American that has just arrived in Palermo and is completely fresh and unconditioned. I've been living here for more than 5 years and am, perhaps, more Palermitana than American.

M. (My partner) doesn't remember the first time we met, when he chased me out from underneath an avocado tree in Palermo's botanical garden chiding me that I was in a prestigious scientific institution and NOT a free-for-all orchard.

The second time we met (and the first time he remembers)was when I came to his office asking about a volunteer position in that same prestigious institution. There had never actually been a volunteer before, at least not in the more modern sense of the word, and there was some puzzlement about how it was to be done. After a department meeting or two and much voting it was decided that he would be my tutor and that I would have to pay for my own insurance.

Looking back, I don't know how consciously M. was in on it, but there was definitely a plot. Nobody in the Botany department or in the Garden was at all surprised when we finally revealed, months later, that we were living together. It was what they had planned for all along.

M. offered to take on his Vespa to get my insurance policy. I was divided over my dislike of fast moving vehicles and childhood love of Audrey Hepburn...but in the end I hiked up my skirt and sat behind M. on the then somewhat lumpy old seat of a scratched up forest green 1974 TS 125 Vespa Piaggio and off we went.

M.'s somewhat flustered state came out in his driving. He would think of something I absolutely HAD to see and suddenly change direction, go against traffic and finally park up on the side-walk. Terrorized, I spent most of my time clutching him tighter and burying my face into his back. Perhaps this was exactly the effect he was hoping for, because he often found reasons for us to leave the Garden together and go for a ride. Also, he talked incessantly. But with the helmet over my ears and the wind whipping away his words, I couldn't catch a thing.

Late Winter moved towards Spring. We moved in together on Valentine's day (not on purpose), but continued to try to keep our relationship secret. He always referred to me as Dotoressa Funsten and I waited until he had left for work to slip out of the apartment and come into the Garden from a different entrance. One day, one of the gardeners gave him a huge bag of fava beans. "Thanks, but what am I supposed to do with all of these fava beans, I don't have any time to cook them," he said.

            The gardener replied, "Can't Dotoressa Funsten cook them for you?" M. and I both turned red in the face.

            "Why should Dotoressa Funsten be cooking my fava beans for me?" he asked carefully.

            "Well you live together, don't you! And she always goes home 45 minutes before you do. I thought that she must do the cooking." 

 

M.'s favorite fava bean dish was, and still is, "favi a cunigghiu" or rabbit fava beans. Rabbit, because they are traditionally eaten without utensils, but by squeezing the bean out of its husk into ones mouth. Presumably, like a rabbit. This is a poor farmer's dish that uses the largest, least prized, fava beans - the ones that are used to feed the livestock.

Both dried or fresh favas can be used. In the kitchen I recommend the Leonforte variety. Dried favas (500 g) should be soaked for 12-18 hours and will take longer to cook. Put them in a big pot, cover with water, add a couple heads of whole garlic and a few bay leaves, and boil them until they are soft (for dried fava beans 2, 5 hours or more or 40 minutes in a pressure cooker).

Fresh favas (1 kg) should be cooked in the same way but will take much less time (30 minutes)

When the beans are soft, salt to taste and add some pepper and a hefty dash of oregano. Traditionally, everybody scooped beans out of a communal pot and sopped up the broth with crusty bread.

...But back to the Vespa...

Remembering it's powerful libidinous effect, I became quite jealous when M. gave rides to young female students or civil service workers. If it came up, I would invent a reason why I urgently needed a ride somewhere or I would be cranky and withdrawn all day. When M. finally got what was bothering out of me, he burst out laughing. The Vespa, an instrument of seduction! Didn't I see all of the unlikely pairs holding on to each other at the stop lights? He did stop giving rides to the young studentesse though.

The Vespa had to be put aside when I was pregnant and a bump on the rode caused a little scare at 5 months. With the Garden across the street, and the demands of a newborn taking up all of his free time, it sat rusting in our apartment building's atrium until after our daughter started to walk. We moved across town, and M. took advantage of the scooter's sabbatical to do some work on it, tuning up the motor, touching up the paint job, and most dramatically completely re-stuffing the seat and re-upholstering it in chocolate brown naugahyde with a cream trim. M.'s warhorse now had class!

Now that are daughter has started nursery school, we've taken to zooming off to our respective jobs together (this time in different parts of the historic center). M. still chatters away and I still can't understand more than half of what he says. I do like looking at the "brotherhood" of scooter-drivers and get a warm fuzzy feeling seeing all of these friends, couples and colleagues hugging each other tightly as they scoot around the cars.

Due Americani a Palermo!

 Photo of the Genio di Palermo at Palazzo Pretorio, by Fabrice de Nola

Yes, It's been a while - almost a year really. My writing has gradually petered out over the past years for various reasons. My daughter is probably the most important. She's three now and both me time and us time just keeps getting more and more precious. The second is an unclear idea of exactly who I am writing to. When I started out, both on the web and for the Giornale di Sicilia, I imagined myself writing a kind of love letter to the dejected Palermitani, hoping to show them how magic they and there city were through the eyes of an American.

Nobody is as critical about Palermo as its own people. They will assure you that it is the most backward, dirty, ignorant city known to man where it is impossible to ever DO anything - anethema exemplified. I have always been fascinated by this love-hate relationship the people here have with their city. In the beginning, that's what bewitched me most about Palermo.

At first I thought that this conflict was at the root of the problem, that the Palermitani had been conquered and humiliated by so many other people throughout history that they just needed a little encouragement in finding a new, more positive identity for themselves other than the downtrodden victim.  I got a lot of my ideas from Leoluca Orlando's Primavera di Palermo (Palermo's Spring) during his 2 first runs as mayor as told by Jane and Peter Schneider, two American Anthropologists, in their book Reversible Destiny, Mafia, Antimafia and the struggles for Palermo. The very title bespeaks to American optimism. I can't imagine a Sicilian ever thinking of Destiny as being reversible, at best he might think of bartering his way out of it.

This is a city that chose the Genio di Palermo (seen in the blogs header) as it's symbol - a crowned midget with a serpent sucking from his breast. There are various representations of this figure throughout the city, but I think the inscription on the the Genio di Palazzo Pretorio says it most clearly; "Panormus conca aurea suos devorat alienos nutrit" or " Palermo, the golden bay, devours its own and nurtures the foreigners." Is this self depreciation something far to ingrained in the culture to be overcome by a new branding strategy...and if it were eradicated what would be left of the culture? Is it, perhaps, an integral part?

But time passed, I've been living in Palermo for over 5 years now. I came almost immediately after graduating from Berkeley and have had the bulk of my adult (work and family) experiences here. As the honeymoon period wore off with the city (more or less in conjuction with having a child. The city's eccentricities become much less cute when they threaten the health and safety of your offspring) It became harder and harder to write. I was confused about my relationship with Palermo, it was becoming more and more ambivalent.

I was becoming Palermitana. At some point I ceased to be an observor and went native, I had been infected with the oppressive cynisism tipical to the Palermitani that nothing would ever go right and that there was little use trying. Corruption, favouritism and dysfunction would always win. But that little germ of American can-do was still persisting somewhere.

When I met Fabrizia Lanza through Manlio, I immediatly recognized a fellow Sicilian/ Cosmopolitan hybrid. She was relaxed, hospitable, sympathetic and knowledgable about the frustrations of trying to make things work here, but also in love with her Island and passionate about wanting to share it's treasures with the rest of the world through her cooking and school (annatascalanza.com). We immediatly started hatching projects and that can-do part of me came alive!

Fabrizia needed an intern to help her in the garden and kitchen and I thought of an old friend of mine from my Landscape Architecture degree at Berkeley. He had asked me for some advice about putting together a propsal for the American Academy in Rome to study the relationship between stories and food. I hadn't heard from him since and supposed that he hadn't gotten it. But maybe I could do better!

When I wrote him, I found out that he had just finished teaching a P.O.N. class in London to a group of students from a small Sicilian Agricultural school and loved it. He was looking for a new job while working nights in a pub to pay his London rent. He jumped at the chance and within a couple of weeks he was here! Everything moved so quickly.

That brings us basically to the present. Andrew has just arrived and is staying with me here in Palermo for a week. He has never been to Sicily before, and has the opportunity to see the city from a fresh angle. We decided to link our blogs (his is handsomeandys.blogspot.it) together and create a kind of dialogue about Sicily - as seen from the point of view of a new arrival and that of a well-seasoned expat who is almost as Sicilian as she is American. 

I think exciting things are in store for us (and you readers as well). Stay tuned...